


Appropriate Tribute

by SapphoIsBurning



Series: The Baysuka Chronicles [1]
Category: NXT, Professional Wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Background Sami/Finn, Backstage, Bittersweet, Episode Tag, F/F, Flirting, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kayfabe Compliant, Language Barrier, M/M, NXT Takeover: Dallas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-05-30 22:43:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6445201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SapphoIsBurning/pseuds/SapphoIsBurning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bayley receives a string of visitors backstage after her loss at NXT Takeover: Dallas, including someone she didn't expect to want to talk to her. They say a lot with few words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Appropriate Tribute

**Author's Note:**

> One more sleep until Wrestlemania! Here is some hurt/comfort set immediately following Bayley and Asuka's match at NXT Takeover: Dallas.

“It’s the Kay Bayley Hutchison Convention Center.  _ Bayley _ ! It just seems unfair!” Carmella shook her head. “I can’t believe she choked you out. How’s your neck?”

“Sore,” croaked Bayley. She shifted in her chair in the trainers’ backstage area to adjust the ice on her knee. It was tweaked for sure and she’d have to rest it a while, but they didn’t think it was anything serious, thank god.

“Are you sure you’re going to be okay? I can stay.” She brushed Bayley’s hair back gently, tucking it behind an ear.

“Go. You and Cass have plans. I’m going to take one million Advils—”

“Four,” Carmella said firmly.

“—four Advils and try to be done crying.” Bayley sniffed.

“Call if you need anything.”

“I’m not interrupting your date to cry about my title. The title. Guess it’s not mine anymore.”

Carmella blew her a kiss, stood up, and left through a curtain.

Bayley sighed deeply. Everyone was preoccupied with treating Samoa Joe’s gushing face wound, so she was alone for the moment. She watched the match play over a monitor. “Don’t wipe off your color, kid,” she found herself saying in an impression of Stone Cold, though it stung a little when the audience booed the medical staff.

The room was quiet and still. She leaned her head back. Somewhere along the line her ponytail holder had come loose and her hair fell in a messy cascade down her back. She tried to twist it up into a bun but it wouldn’t stay put.

Suddenly, Scott Hall stomped in from around a temporary wall set up to divide the medical area. “Hey kid,” he said, taking the toothpick from his mouth. “Great match. You had a hell of a run. Seen Trips around?”

“No, I haven’t seen him,” she said dazed.

“Oh, I got something for ya,” he said, handing over a bunch of roses. “Nash couldn’t be here tonight, but he says hey.”

She pressed her lips together. “Thanks,” she said. “Tell him I finally saw Magic Mike XXL.”

“You like it?” he asked.

She tilted her head back and forth. “The crotch chop made me snort my Sprite. Yeah, it was pretty good.”

He laughed. “Strippers. Who woulda thought?”

She shrugged, then regretted it as she felt the pain of Asuka’s armbars all over again.

“Take care, kiddo. I’ll see you around.” With a wave, he was gone.

Finn and Joe’s fight seemed to be wrapping up. Finn got off his coup de grace, and it looked like the pin was coming.

But then Asuka, of all damn people, wandered in, rifling through stashes of supplies looking for something. The championship was still over her shoulder. “Wrestling,” she said to herself, shaking her head. “Wrestling. WRESTLING.” She looked up and noticed her. “Wrestling! Bayley, wrestling!” She gestured emphatically. “Good wrestling.” She set the title down and came over to Bayley, sitting down next to her.

“Good wrestling,” Bayley said. She pointed at Asuka. “Very good wrestling.”

Asuka put her hand gently on Bayley’s leg. They looked each other in the eye with intensity and gentleness, alone together with no cameras or crowds to postgame their every decision or every step. “Thank you, Bayley,” Asuka said, her eyes glistening.

“No, Asuka...arigatou gozaimashita,” Bayley replied. The other woman’’s face lit up.

“Very good!” Asuka said, nodding. She grabbed Bayley’s hand and brought it to her lips. Bayley warily let the other woman touch her, not forgetting the moment that consciousness left her and the moment afterward where she woke up not the champion anymore. It was amazing that the other woman’s touch could be so fierce but also so gentle.

Asuka’s lips brushed against Bayley’s hand in a kiss, never breaking eye contact, and then she sat there, holding Bayley’s hand and gazing at her with admiration. Bayley felt an entirely different kind of butterflies than she had felt in the ring not that long before this moment. The longer they sat there together, though, the more Bayley thought that maybe they were the same butterflies. Trainers began to bustle in and out of the room, but no one paid them any attention.

“Practice,” Asuka said, finally.

“Practice what?”

“Japanese. English. We practice.” Then Asuka smiled that evil smile, biting her lip, but it was all for Bayley. “Together?”

Bayley gripped Asuka’s hand back. “Sure. Yes,” she added to be extra clear. “We should practice together.”

“Thank you,” Asuka said, finally, getting to her feet and taking the title. She looked at the belt, then up at Bayley’s face. “Good wrestling.” She let go of Bayley’s hand.

Asuka waved enigmatically as she left, and Bayley wondered if she had found what she had been looking for.

Time moved weirdly backstage. The match on the monitor was over now but for the lingering gazes. She closed her eyes. When she opened them, Finn was stomping in followed by a trainer. “I didn’t bite him, you saw the tape. I don’t care if you think you saw tooth marks, you know that’s crazy talk.”

“You can talk it over with Mister Regal when we go over tapes back at the Performance Center this week.” The trainer vanished back out the entrance.

“Hey,” Bayley said weakly.

Finn looked over and saw her. “Bayley, Bayley, Bayley, where did our love go?” he sang.

“Not you too,” she sighed. Ever since London, fans had taken to replacing “baby” with “Bayley” in songs and singing them. She liked it, but Justin Bieber’s “Baby” got a little tiring on long bus rides. The Supremes were at least tolerable.

He grabbed a towel, drying himself off, smearing his makeup even more, and getting off the rest of the blood that he could reach. He plopped down where Asuka had just been sitting.

“What do you need right now, Bay,” he asked.

Sami poked his head through the curtains, his face faintly streaked from the tears he had shed that evening. “There you are!” He said.

“That’s not a bad start,” Bayley deadpanned. Sami limped in. He was black and blue in places and red in the face from the ferocious elbow strikes he had traded with Shinsuke Nakamura. Finn stood up to pull him into a hug.

“Match of year,” Bayley said. “If I could move, I’d get up to hug you too.”

“Bayley all out of hugs?” Sami said, shocked. “Oh my gosh, what did she do to you.”

“Asked me on a date, I think,” Bayley said.

Finn and Sami’s heads jerked over to look her in the eye, and then they looked at each other.

“About time,” Finn said. “Did you use any of the Japanese I taught you?”

“Yeah,” Bayley said, blushing a bit. “I need to learn a few more things.”

“Hear that Finn?” Sami said, elbowing the other man. “We need to learn her a few more things. For her date.”

“Stop it,” Bayley said, rolling her eyes.

“Ooh, Bayley Bayley,” Finn rapped. Sami joined in. “Ooh, Bayley Bayley. Push it! Do-doot do do, da da do do do do do, push it real good...”

The three of them were wracked with laughter and tears when Carmella pushed her way in with her boys in tow.

Cass and Enzo hugged her one by one. “Hugs for the hug throne,” Enzo said, gently butting their heads together.

“What are you guys doing back?” Bayley asked.

“We couldn’t leave you alone tonight,” Carmella said. “Date plans or not.” Cass nodded, solid behind her.

“She’s not alone now—the gang’s all here,” Finn said.

“Not for much longer,” Sami said, trying to fight the sadness. “Tonight.”

“I haven’t even gotten any Advil yet,” Bayley said.

“Here,” Carmella said, pushing her purse at the other woman. “There’s some in here. Look, we should all celebrate being right here, right now, for this moment. Who knows when we’ll get to be together again?”

Bayley sighed. “Can we get milkshakes?” She asked. “That’s what I want. I want ice cream. And friendship.”

Finn put his arm around Sami. “I should probably wash all this off before going out.”

“Yeah, I need a shower too,” Sami said, probably blushing behind his already red cheeks.

“Meet back here in 20,” Carmella said. They walked out together, talking closely, touching gently.

“One more thing,” Bayley said.

Her friends turned to her.

“Can I see if Asuka wants to come?” she asked. 

Enzo and Cass looked at each other with surprise, but Carmella just shook her head. “You gonna hug it out or something?”

“I didn’t get to after the match,” Bayley said. “Thought I’d make it up to her.”

“Anything you want,” Enzo said, waving his arms. “She may be the empress of tomorrow, but you’re the goddess right now. We do what you say.”

Bayley remembered the feeling of Asuka’s skin striking her skin, wrenching her body, touching her body gently. She shivered, and finally spoke. “Asuka just...takes my breath away.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Very peripherally inspired by the twitter account @godtributes.
> 
> I remember Scott Hall and Kevin Nash being there at NXT Takeover: Brooklyn, and I saw Hall was in the crowd at this one too. I imagine them like the drunk uncles to the NXT crowd, but in a good way (hopefully).


End file.
